There are only four great apes: gorillas, chimpanzees,
orangutans, and the lesser-known bonobo. They are
large, fur-covered primates with very long arms, big
brains, and no tail. Come to think of it, my Dad
could qualify, as could many Greek and Israeli men.
Humans are most closely related to chimps, with whom
we share 98% of our genes. Yet we still share 97% of
our genes with gorillas. In Malaysian Borneo, Nori
and I had already seen orangutan (Bahasa for 'wild
man') at the Sandakan sanctuary. In Uganda, we
planned on seeing both the mountain gorilla and
chimpanzees, in addition to many other smaller
primates.
Seeing the great apes in Uganda is not cheap. Permits
to track the mountain gorillas in the ominously but
appropriately named Bwindi Impenetrable Forest
National Park cost US$275 per person. To see the
chimps at Kibale National Park costs around US$60 per
person for park entry and the guide. Yet even
niggardly backpackers somehow manage to find the
funds, and few regret the decision. Many travelers on
the Cape to Cairo journey regard mountain gorilla
tracking as a highlight of their trip. We met several
people who had seen the gorillas in Uganda, and were
returning to repeat the experience in Rwanda, or vice
versa.

We were traveling with Anke, a peripatetic German
woman we had met in Kampala. Anke works for the
catering arm of Lufthansa on a very casual basis, yet
she still manages to travel 3-4 months a year and her
tickets are at 10% of retail! Anke had hoped to share
a ride with us to Bwindi (we had met two Swedish men
at the Uganda Wildlife Authority who were renting a
car), but there wasn't enough room in the sedan so she
had to take the bus. Naturally, our car broke down
three-quarters of the way to Bwindi. We had to laugh
as Anke went rocketing past us in the bus, a big smile
on her face.

We were concerned about Nori's broken foot. Tracking
the gorillas could involve up to eight hours of
trekking through dense undergrowth. It had rained
heavily the night before. We heard horror stories
from a Canadian group who had tromped up and down
several jungly ridges before they found their group of
gorillas. There are three groups of habituated
mountain gorillas at Bwindi. There is no perennially
'easy' group to find, as the gorillas all move about
the park freely. The group that was near the park
entrance a week ago could now be several kilometers
away.

So we were very relived when, after just ten minutes
of bushwhacking, our guide motioned for us to stop and
pointed to a nearby tree. There, about fifteen feet
up in the crotch of a tree, was a female gorilla
munching on leaves. After we watched for a while, we
followed the guide twenty feet further and found
ourselves on the main park road. We were only a five
minute walk from the park entrance!

Even the ten minutes of bushwhacking had been a
charade; the guides knew exactly where the gorillas
were, but wanted us to at least have a taste of forest
trekking. They also wanted to show us the gorillas'
nesting spot from the night before. The whole area
was flattened by their enormous weight, and as is
gorilla custom, large piles of green poo were left in
the 'beds' before they left. Since the gorillas' diet
is strictly vegetarian, the scat looked like the stuff
you dump out of a lawnmower bag. As a wise gorilla
once said, "you made your bed and now you must crap in
it."

There were gorillas all around us. Just off the road
sat a large female cradling an infant. She fixed us
with a long stare before continuing to eat. There
were several gorillas high in the trees flanking the
road. They were a lazy lot. Rather than move, they
would reach to nearby branches and pull them down
until they broke. Their bellies were massively
distended - so full of leaves that researchers have
difficulty telling when a female is pregnant. They
are also prodigiously flatulent.

We were nearing the end of our one hour with the
gorillas, so the guide decided to move us closer to
the main group. In a small clearing, not far from
where we saw the first gorilla, sat a large female and
the group's dominant silverback. The silverback was
jaw-droppingly large - a no-necked slab of muscle -
and he was less than 20 feet away.

He seemed to get tired of all the attention, and moved
to the road, nonchalantly (but maliciously) yanking
down a branch on which another gorilla sat. Then he
turned away from us, sat down, and spread the muscles
of his upper back as if to illustrate his strength. A
juvenile male had followed the silverback to the main
road. Curious, he moved crabwise towards us. Then,
as if to demonstrate that even he was a silverback in
training, he stood briefly on his back legs and beat a
rapid tattoo on his chest. Then he dropped to all
fours and scampered away.

We managed to make it from Bwindi to Kibale in one
long day of transportation involving five vehicles: a
truck, a bus, and three different dala-dalas (the
overstuffed vans driven by maniacs.) Sometimes local
transportation can surprise you. It is rarely
comfortable, but it can often be quite efficient. The
only downside was the theft of US$100 from our money
belt; we still can't figure out how that happened.

The Kibale Forest National Park is much friendlier to
walkers. Unlike Bwindi, it is easy to move about,
even off the main trails. Unlike Bwindi, you can
often see for a hundred feet through the forest, as
the undergrowth is fairly light. We struck off early
with Aston, a cheerful guide who could do amazing
vocal impressions of the park's primates. His
grey-cheeked mangabee (yes, that's a kind of monkey)
was uncanny.

Every ten minutes or so, a cacophony of hoots, shrieks
and drumming on tree buttresses would burst from
forest. We were getting closer. We had left the
first trail, trail-blazed through the forest to
another trail, and began to climb a moderate hill when
the screams erupted behind us. "Yes!" shouted Anke.
Our hearts were pounding with excitement. We whipped
around and broke into a trot back down the trail and
soon found ourself in the path of a chimpanzee exodus.

The chimps moved quickly along the ground, always
keeping an eye on us. A female was feeding on the
branches of a sapling, seemingly oblivious to the
arboreal gymnastics of her infant. We followed one of
the older chimps, named Mzee (old man), who led us
past the resting spot of Grumpus, a grizzled old chimp
with a disproportionately large left nostril. He
didn't seem bothered by us. He just sat and preened
and ate a few leaves and gave a perfunctory hoot when
the chimp chorus started up again.

We moved on to one of the chimps' favorite trees, a
tall fig in fruit. A half-dozen chimps were swinging
around in the canopy, gobbling fruit and executing
death-defying leaps to lower trees. There must have
been at least forty chimps in our vicinity. Though
the chimps are the stars of Kibale, they are far from
the only primates found in the park. During our
3-hour walk we saw red colobus monkeys, L' Hoest's
monkeys, red-tailed monkeys, blue monkeys, and, of
course, the grey-cheeked mangabee.

The cool mountain highlands are salubrious for more
than just primates. Both Bwindi and Kibale are hemmed
in by rolling expanses of brilliant green tea bushes.
In Bwindi, the three-foot high bushes extend right to
the park border, where a profusion of hardwoods
stretch interlacing branches to the sky. The tea
plantation owners and the primate conservationists
were battling for the hearts, minds, and stomachs of
the local villagers. Both groups built community
buildings (schools, meeting halls, orphanages, etc.)
and then erected big roadside signs so that everyone
knew where the money came from. But I could easily
read the tea leaves. If the parklands had not been
protected, the primates' already much-diminished
territory would have quickly become carpeted in tea.

Scientists are rarely celebrities, but Dian Fossey and
Jane Goodall come close. Through their pioneering
studies of mountain gorillas (Fossey) and chimpanzees
(Goodall) in the 70's and 80's, the world was made
aware of the apes' desperate plight. Fossey's memoirs
were the basis for the book and movie "Gorillas in the
Mist." She was murdered in 1985, at the research camp
she founded in Rwanda. Though gorilla numbers
continued to fall during the period of her research,
there is reason to be hopeful: since 1989, the number
of gorillas in the Virunga mountains has increased by
17%, from 324 to 380. In addition, there are 320
animals in the much smaller Bwindi National Park, for
a total of around 700.

Though much of Jane Goodall's work was conducted at
the Gombe Stream National Park in western Tanzania,
her urgent appeal to save the chimps is directly
responsible for an increase in conservation efforts
around Africa, including Uganda. The gorillas are
more threatened than the chimps. However, in most
countries in Africa, the chimps are fast-disappearing.
A noted American primatologist believes that out of
25 countries in Africa currently with chimpanzee
populations, only 10 will still have chimps within a
few decades. Hunting and habitat loss are the biggest
culprits. More chimpanzees are killed In the rest of
Africa, more chimps are killed each year than exist in
Uganda.

During Idi Amin's murderous regime, the mountain
gorillas and chimpanzees of southwest Uganda were
hunted for bush meat. When Hutu hardliners were
chased across the Rwandan border into northeastern
Congo, the mountain gorillas of the Virunga National
Park were once again stalked and killed. Until
recently, farmers simply shot gorillas and chimps on
sight. We even heard a true story of a park ranger
who found a group of kids playing soccer with a
tied-up baby chimp.

One would hope that educating Africans about their
great and fragile natural heritage will lead to a new
generation of Africans who want to preserve their
unique environments. If education doesn't work,
perhaps economics will. The parks and related
services like accommodation and curio shops employ
thousands. But I can't help being pessimistic. In
much of Africa, where human life can often seem so
cheap, and the next meal is never guaranteed, how can
we expect the common man to care for the apes?